Let's be a professional employment

A general principle of the Bulgarian labour law related to the secondment of employees from Bulgaria is the prohibition of a unilateral amendment by the employer of the employment agreement, a substantial element of which is the place of work.

However, the nature of the employment or the needs of the employer sometimes require a temporary cross-border relocation of an employee to a subsidiary or affiliated company of the same group in another country, or to a client in the context of cross-border provision of services. This is commonly known as “posting” or ”secondment” and leads to a temporary change in the place of work of the employee that affects the whole legal relationship. The most important implications of the cross-border posting of employees from Bulgaria abroad can be summarized as follows:

I. Employment Implications

In case the employee secondment does not exceed 30 days, the employer can send its employ

Related Article

Can You Sue Your Boss for Teasing You about Being Gay (Even If You’re Not)?

Employee is harassed after not acting like a “man’s man”.

Read Article

ee to another country for business-trip purposes without the employee’s explicit consent. It suffices

Taiwanese Ministry of Labor published model rules for Labor Relationship on October 5th, 2015. When an employer would like to protect the business interests and an employee would like to know his/her rights after an employment contract is terminated, this article explains the new model rules which both the employers and the employees should pay attention to.

First of all, Taiwanese Ministry of Labor defined that the Post Employment Non-Compete Clause as referred to in the model rules means any agreement entered into between an employee and an employer that, in order to protect interests as defined within the scope of Article 5, the employer pays reasonable compensation to the employee in exchange for the employee’s not being employed by or starting the same or similar business in competition against the employer within certain period and/or certain area since the termination of the employee’s labor contract.

The model rules section 5 provides that “[t]he employer may not conclude a Post Employment Non-Compete Clause with the employee unle

Related Article

Can My Employer Force Me to Break the Law?

Due to the difference in the levels between employers and employees, an employer may

Due to the difference in the levels between employers and employees, an employer may sometimes try to take advantage of this greater power by requesting an employee to commit some illegal act to further business or personal interests.

However, employees will not be shielded from criminal prosecution simply because they felt their job was threatened if they did not commit the act. There may be several protections available to employees who refuse to commit crimes at the directive of their employer.

Whistleblower Statutes

Federal employees are protected by the federal whistleblower statute. Many states have passed similar laws that pertain to state government or even private businesses. The actual law that may provide protection from adverse employment action depends on the type of criminal conduct that is being protected. Whistleblower statutes may expand from environmental dumping to fraudulent accounting pr

Related Article

Warrant Scam

Individuals in several states have reported receiving phone calls or emails informing them that there is a warrant for their arrest. This communication is often part of a larger scam in which the con artist attempts to receive money based on this fraud and extortion.

A lot of women have a rude awakening about their jobs when they get pregnant.

Long before it’s time to discuss eligibility for maternity leave, many female workers are forced to grapple with a more immediate issue. That is, their job duties could put their health – or that of their unborn children – at risk.

As we’ve discussed in previous blog posts, there are no federal laws that dictate specific job protections for the health and safety of pregnant women. Rather, job accommodations must be considered in light of amendments to the ADA, in which some pregnancy-related conditions may be treated as disabilities.

Unfortunately, this lack of clear-cut safeguards leaves many

Related Article

Seconding Employees from Bulgaria Abroad

A general principle of the Bulgarian labour law related to the secondment of employees from Bulgaria is the prohibition of a unilateral amendment by the employer of the employment agreement, a substantial element of which is the place of work.

Read Article

working women in vulnerable positions. If they aren’t informed about their rights, they may end up losing their jobs and their healthcare when they need it most.

When a person quits or is terminated, he or she may believe that he or she is entitled to the last paycheck immediately. However, this is often not the case. The employer may have a certain amount of time to provide this check to the employee. However, if the employer refuses to pay the employee for the hours he or she worked, the employee may have legal options to recover these unpaid wages.

Federal Law

Federal law does not require employers to give a final paycheck to employees immediately. If an employee has not received payment on the usual payday, he or she may choose to contact the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division or the applicable state labor department.

State Law

Wage claims are largely handled on the state level. However, there can be tremendous variance in these laws. For example, some states require the employer to pay an employee a final paycheck immediately after termination or on the next business days.
Others require only that employers provide the final paycheck on the regularly-scheduled payday.

Each year, over 4,500 workers are killed in this country. While the number has decreased since the 1970s, the annual number has remained steady for the last decade. Workers’ compensation laws often fail to protect workers from serious work hazards. The exclusivity provision of workers’ compensation laws in most states prevents injured workers from bringing lawsuits against their employers. This tends to create a situation in which employers often ignore critical safety regulations.

At the turn of the century, most states adopted workers’ compensation laws to address the fact that workers injured in work accidents suffered severe financial losses. Without workers’ compensation laws, employees had to sue employers to recover for their financial losses. This left workers without financial compensation for months, if not years. So, the system was designed to alleviate this problem and provide medical benefits and indemnity (wage loss payments).

There are two key elements of the workers’ compensation system. First, injured workers are usually eligible for benefits without regard to fault. This means that an injured worker who unintentionally causes their own accident

Related Article

Pennsylvania Liquor Liability Laws and Office Holiday Parties

An office holiday party is compulsory in most American businesses. According to

You get the feeling that your new supervisor doesn’t like you. Her body language and her tone of voice change when she speaks to you … for some reason she just seems nicer to everyone else.

Maybe you can just “suck it up” and do your job anyway. But you can’t help but wonder if this personality conflict could jeopardize your job. And if so, would it be legal for the boss to fire you simply because she doesn’t like you?

Let’s take a look at what Pennsylvania says about this.

Does Unlikeable Equal Unemployed?

The first thing you should know is that Pennsylvania is an at-will employment state.

What that means is that employers generally have the right to ter

Related Article

What Are the Elements of a New York Whistleblower Law Claim?

The elements of a cause of action under the New York Whistleblower Law.

Read Article

minate workers at any time, for any reason. Yes, even for no reason at all.

On the flipside, workers are legally allowed to resign at any time, with or without notice, for any reason or for no reason.
While there are some exceptions to

When a foreign worker provides services in Brazil the laws governing the contract are the laws of the country of origin or the laws of Brazil? This special article is about the foreign employment in Brazil and principles adopted by the Brazilian Labor Court on the demands arising from those relationships.

The policy of the Labor Court is that the legal work relationship shall be governed by the laws of the country were the services are delivered as specify the Statement of Precedent No. 207/TST stated by the Supreme Labor Court in April, 2012, with base on the vote of the Vice- President Minister Maria Cristina Peduzzi at the Process 93.2000.5.01.0019-RR-219000.

The summary embraced the principle of “lex loci executionis” claiming to be the legal relationship governed by the labor laws of the country where the services are effectively

Related Article

New Law Offers Piece Rate Employers a Possible “Get Out of Jail Free” Card

If you are a piece rate employer you may know about two recent cases: Gonzales v. Downtown LA Motors, 215 Cal.App.4th 36 (2013) and

Diagnostic Pathology Group Pays $500,000 to Settle Allegations that Physicians Were Given Electronic Medical Record (EMR) Software in Exchange for Patient Referrals

A former contract salesperson will receive a $75,000 whistleblower reward for helping the government investigate a very subtle kickback relationship between a diagnostic pathology group and physician practices.

According to the government, Piedmont Pathology, a diagnostic anatomic pathology group, provided Electronic Medical Record (EMR) software licenses at little or no cost to physicians’ practices in exchange for patient referrals.

The government found that the pathology group provided the EMR software licenses to nine physicians’ practices close in time to when those practices entered contracts to refer specimens to the pathology lab. Providing anything of value in return

Related Article

Can Employers Blow Off Complaints That Aren’t In Writing?

In a case that’s nearly too crazy to believe, a boss who pulled a gun on a worker got a pass in court, while the worker was dinged for not filing a form.

Read Article

for patient referrals violates the Anti-Kickback Statute. In addition, once a kickback is paid, any resulting claims for reimbursement to Medicare or Medicaid are considered “false claims” for purposes of the federal False Claims Act. A

The elements of a cause of action under the New York Whistleblower Law.

The New York Whistleblower Law, N.Y. Labor Law §§ 740 – 741, prohibits all employers from discharging, suspending, demoting, or otherwise retaliating against an employee because the employee, among other independent actions, discloses to a supervisor or to a public body an unlawful activity, policy or practice of the employer that creates and presents a substantial and specific danger to the public health or safety, or which constitutes health care fraud.

More specifically, the New York Whistleblower Law bars all employers from retaliating against an employee because the employee does any of the following:

● discloses, or threatens to disclose to, a supervisor or to a pub

Related Article

$75,000 Whistleblower Reward in EMR Kickback Case

Diagnostic Pathology Group Pays $500,000 to Settle Allegations that Physicians Were Given Electronic Medical Record (EMR) Software in Exchange for Patient Referrals

Read Article

lic body (such as a legislative body, a judicial officer, an administrative agency, or a law enforcement agency) an activity, policy or practice of the employer that violates a law, rule or regulation, which violation creates and presents a substantial and specific danger to the public health or

There are substantial amendments to the Bulgarian employment law and particularly to the Labour Code (“LC”)1 effective from 17th July 2015. Some stylistic amendments modernizing the legislation are also introduced. In view of these novelties in the legal framework, this alert aims at presenting highlights on the most important employment law changes.

I. LEAVES

Substantial part of the newly introduced employment law provisions concerns reduction of the formalities related to the use of paid leaves. In practice, the abolished rules rather caused difficulties than helping the involved parties to exercise their rights in the best manner.

Further, more favourable provisions for mothers of four and more children and employees using sabbatical leave are introduced.

1. Without Schedules for Annual Paid Leave

Employers are not obliged to prepare and approve schedules for the use of annual paid leave by their employees. As a result the due annual leave will be used only upon request of the employee and written appro

Related Article

New Law Offers Piece Rate Employers a Possible “Get Out of Jail Free” Card

If you are a piece rate employer you may know about two recent cases: Gonzales v. Downtown LA Motors, 215 Cal.App.4th 36 (2013) and Bluford v. Safeway,

First, in addition to paying the piece rates earned, an employer must separately pay employees for rest break time (10 minutes for every four work hours). Second, the employer is required to record and then separately pay for all non-productive work time (such as time spent waiting for the next piece rate job). Those two holdings have made piece rate compensation complex and daunting. Many employers in the agriculture, construction, manufacturing, and transportation industries have become vulnerable to possible liability as a result of these cases. Even when ultimate compensation is relatively high, a disgruntled former employer or a hungry attorney may try to focus on technical “gotchas” to

Related Article

Unfair Dismissal in Malta?

Recently a case was brought before the Industrial Tribunal by an aggrieved employee who had his employment terminated after being in employment for six years pursuant to an indefinite contract with Maltco Lotteries Limited.

Nearly 30 million Americans have diabetes today. Medical and treatment advances have allowed people with diabetes to maintain long and productive lives, at school, at home and at work

There are some common issues that arise for people with diabetes in the workplace such as how to handle the need to take medications, breaks, or deal with blood glucose monitoring and management. Employers may raise concerns about whether or not an individual with diabetes can safely perform a particular job.

The laws that offer some guidance on these issues are the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 at the federal level, as well as the many state and local human rights laws that address disability related discrimination.

Both the ADA and the Rehabilitation Act prohibit discrimination in employment against qualified individuals with disabilities,

Related Article

What Happens If My Property Is Wrongfully Seized and Sold at Auction?

In some instances, a party has the right to reclaim property and sell it off at auction. This can be the case in a number of legal actions, including home foreclosures, vehicle repossessions and storage locker auctions. Additionally, this party is often entitled to receive a deficiency judgment for

Staffer returned from maternity leave – only to find her job had been filled

If an employee gets pregnant and decides to return to work after taking maternity leave, her employer is generally required to restore her to her prior position, at the same pay right and with the same duties.

While that may seem pretty straight-forward, unfortunately, that’s not always the way things play out.

Sometimes companies may refuse to allow a woman to resume her job duties. Some businesses may even engage in more subtle maneuvers to force the woman to quit or to “punish” her for taking leave.

Let’s take a look at how this can play out.

Pregnancy was a problem for management

A female employee had been employed as a day stocker and warehouse emplo

Related Article

New Law Offers Piece Rate Employers a Possible “Get Out of Jail Free” Card

Recently a case was brought before the Industrial Tribunal by an aggrieved employee who had his employment terminated after being in employment for six years pursuant to an indefinite contract with Maltco Lotteries Limited.

The employee alleged that his employment was not terminated in accordance with the law but rather he was unfairly dismissed, and therefore, the employee filed a case before the Industrial Tribunal for unfair dismissal.

The employee had started to work with the defendant company in 2004, and he was subsequently asked to file an application in order for him to be approved by the Lotteries and Gaming Authority (LGA – now the Malta Gaming Authority – MGA). The applicant had handed in the mentioned application whereby he disclosed that he had a criminal record. The applicant was informed by the defendant company that if the LGA would have found a problem with this then they would have advi

Related Article

Sex and Gender Harassment at Work: What California Employees Should Know

Are you being harassed at work due to your sex or gender? If so, you may be able to file a workplace harassment complaint. Not only does California law protect employees from workplace discrimination

Many employers require an employee to give two weeks’ notice in order for that employee to be eligible for rehire. By providing this notice, the employee is informing the employer of his or her plan to leave employment. Generally, employees are not entitled to unemployment benefits if they voluntarily quit their job. However, this idea becomes murky when the employer terminates the employee before the employee has the opportunity to leave by the designated date.

The employer may decide to terminate the employee for a number of reasons. He or she may simply be offended by the employee’s planned departure. The employer may anticipate that the employee may try to use his or her current position to influence coworkers or steal clients or confidential information. The employee’s performance may dwindle during the time period in which the notice is effective.

General Rules

Typically, unemployment benefits are only available to those employees who lost their jobs involuntarily. Therefore, most people who quit are not entitled to unemployment benefits. There is an exception to this rule known as constructive discharge. This occurs when the co

Are you being harassed at work due to your sex or gender? If so, you may be able to file a workplace harassment complaint. Not only does California law protect employees from workplace discrimination and retaliation, but also a variety of forms of harassment in the workplace However, it can be difficult to know what exactly your rights are when it comes to sex and gender harassment in the workplace.

Facts on sex and gender harassment in California, and when it may be proper to contact an employment lawyer to file a workplace harassment complaint.

What is Sex and Gender Harassment?

Before you can proceed with filing a workplace harassment complaint, it is important to differentiate between sex and gender harassment and sexual harassment.

Sexual harassment falls under the gender harassment umbrella of negative employer behaviors, and is the most commonly understood type of harassment. Sexual harassment generally happens when an employer demands sexual favors as a condition of employment, creating a hostile or offensive work environment that prohibits an employee from

Related Article

Am I Entitled to Unemployment Benefits If I Was Fired After Giving Notice?

Many employers require an employee to give two weeks’ notice in order for that

An office holiday party is compulsory in most American businesses. According to a recent poll of human resources departments across the country, an estimated 90% of companies will gather after hours for merriment and good cheer this holiday season. Depending on the location of an office holiday party and whether or not alcohol will be served, Philadelphia Workers’ Compensation lawyers say that liability for work accidents occurring during or after the festivities should be a concern.

In Pennsylvania, liquor liability laws counsel that retailers licensed by the Liquor Control Board can be held liable for over-serving a patron who goes on to harm himself or others, but such liability has not been extended by courts to include social hosts. Nonetheless, in order to avoid being named in a lawsuit after-the-fact, employers should refrain from hosting holiday parties on-site. An employer should also take steps to ensure that employees do not become inebriated during the event even if the party has been outsourced to a restaurant or other facility.

To that end, if a professional bartender will be on hand, employers should discuss their expectations. Additionally, employe

Related Article

Trying to Get Staffers to Work Off-the-Clock Backfires Big Time; Company

Employees were paid by the task rather than actual time spent working.

There are many models that companies can use to legally compensate workers. Some employees are paid on an hourly or salaried basis. Some people work largely for tips.

Then there’s the piece-rate compensation model. That’s when people are paid a set rate based on the amount of work they complete.

For example, a factory worker might be compensated based on the number of objects assembled in a workday.

While this practice is legal, in some instances, the piece work method can leave workers shortchanged and underpaid.

Not Paid for Time Between Tasks

For instance, mechanics who worked for a national car repair chain found the piece-work method of pay to be une

Related Article

Denied an Interview Because of Past Mistakes? The Law Can Protect Your Rights

Earlier this year, HB5701, the Job Opportunities for Qualified Applicants Act, was passed and signed into law in Illinois. This law is more colloquially known as the Ban the Box law and presents Illinois job applicants with greater opportunities to secure employment. Similar laws are becoming popular throughout the United States. Currently, 12 states have statewide Ban the Box laws and 19 states contain